The mental health model of psychological well-being regards the human mind on the model of a physical organism. Syndromes of behavior or thought which lead to distress are, in this model, regarded as "disorders" which are being "caused" by something other than one's own choices. This view is sharply at odds with traditional ethical and religious theories of human responsibility, which assert that what you choose to do is up to you.

By the 1930s the mental health model had assumed legal force in the English-speaking world. Pre-eminent among these was Sigmund Freud's classical theory of psychoanalysis, which is based on the philosophies of naturalism and the sort of determinism which "excludes the possibility of free will and sees current behaviour as entirely determined by the environment or past events". [1]